Part 15

Life is too short to spend any time on a book that is not worth reading; but when you read a good book you will be richly repaid if you stick a sort of mental pin in sentences that especially impress you and return to them again and again. If the book is your own, it is sometimes helpful to mark it neatly here and there, and to copy some of the nuggets of thoughts. In that way you help to fasten them in your brain, and perhaps to engraft their meaning upon your lives. From a book of the writings and speeches of a New York preacher, Dr. Maltbie D. Babcock, who went a year or two ago to “the better land,” I have culled the following sentences that hold, I think, a helpful message for boys and girls as well as for old people.

“Look out for your choices. They run into conduct, character, destiny.

“To make the best of things is the right way to let things make the best of you.

“Pay as little attention to discouragement as possible. This is the only world in which a Christian can suffer.

“Whenever you feel blue remember that God loves you and think up some kindness, if no more than sending a flower to some one or writing a note.

“If you can help anybody, even a little, be glad.

“Do not let the good things of life rob you of the best things.

“What have you done to-day that none but a Christian would do?”

XCII. THE UNSEEN CHARMER.

Carl Brickermann, a collection clerk in an uptown bank, in his accustomed daily routine found it necessary, among other things, to call by telephone the downtown brokerage firm of Hopegood & Co. One day he missed the familiar feminine voice which had usually responded to his calls. But the new voice seemed sweeter and much more passionately penetrating. For two or three days Brickermann was puzzled, not only because of the change at the other end of the ’phone, but also because of the strange and unaccountable fascination which the new voice possessed for him. At length one day, almost in desperation, he turned aside from his regular business inquiries to ask:

“Where’s the other girl?”

“Which other girl?” asked the mellifluous voice over the articulate wire.

“The one who used to answer the ’phone for the Hopegoods,” explained Brickermann.

“Promoted,” came the response, with a merry little laugh.

“And you have her old place?” asked Brickermann, somewhat encouraged.

“Yes; for awhile,” said the same still, small voice at the other end, and it sounded more and more sweetly to the would-be masher.

“Well,” said Brickermann, laughing the while, “I used to know her quite well, and I should like to meet you face to face, if you don’t mind. I am so charmed with the music of your voice I am sure I should be perfectly entranced with the magic of your face.”

A merry peal of laughter from the other end greeted this sally. The young man continued:

“I used to come down some days about four o’clock to see Margie. Will you, my Unseen Charmer, grant me the same high favor?”

“Why, certainly! Come any day,” answered the sweet voice which had so strangely bewitched the young man. In ecstasy Brickermann shouted back:

“I’ll be down this afternoon.”

Brickermann hung up the receiver, and, chuckling with delight, he turned to his other duties with the alacrity that a young spring chicken displays when it suddenly discovers a big fat worm.

By three-thirty o’clock he had arranged his toilet, and stood before the mirror giving the finishing twirl to his budding moustache. He brushed his clothing the second time, brushed his hat, and, figuratively speaking, arrayed in purple and fine linen, he sallied forth. He boarded an elevated train bound for the downtown district. On his way down he tried to picture to himself the kind of a girl he should meet at the Hopegoods. Would she be tall or short of stature? Blonde or brunette? Above twenty-one years of age or only sweet sixteen? The quick arrival of the train at Park Place put a period to Brickermann’s reverie. He went tripping across a few blocks to the place where all of his hopes had been centered during the past few hours—in fact, days. Arrived there, he stepped into the front office where “Margie” had formerly presided. It was the same snug and cosy room, but he failed to behold there the eagerly expected young lady. Instead he ran amuck a chubby little boy, with a ruddy face and curly hair, and perhaps not more than fourteen or fifteen years old, sitting in “Margie’s” place.

Brickermann was visibly embarrassed. He did not know where to begin or what to say. He twitched nervously at the glove which he carried in his hand, and finally he stammered:

“Is—er—Mr. Hopegood in?”

“No, sir,” said the boy. “Can I be of any service to you?”

Brickermann’s face turned blood red, and great drops of perspiration stood out upon his forehead. The accents of the little boy startled him, for they were the same that had been wafted to him almost daily along the wire and with which he thought he had been enamored. In the midst of his confusion he managed to say, hoping almost against hope that his identity had not been discovered:

“Well, er—er—I’ll call again.”

And, without waiting to hear the Unseen Charmer speak again, he hastily retired with as good grace as was possible under the circumstances.

XCIII. OUR COUNTRY.

Boys and girls, we are all American citizens, the last one of us. This is our country, as much as it is the country of any other race, and we should love it and fight for it as our fathers have loved, fought and died for it on many a battlefield. We may be the descendants of Africans, but we are citizens of the United States. This is our home—our country. Let us believe it, in spite of what some foolish people say. Therefore I am going to give you one or two sentiments which you should learn early in life in order to stimulate your patriotism.

1. May the honor of our country be without stain.

2. May the glory of America never cease to shine.

3. May every American manfully withstand corruption.

4. May reverence for the laws ever predominate in the hearts of the American people.

5. The sons and daughters of America, may their union be cemented by love and affection, and their offspring adorn the stations they are destined to fill.

6. May the growth of the American union never be prevented by party spirit.

7. The boys of America, may they be strong and virtuous, manly and brave.

8. The girls of America, may they prove to be such in heart and life as will make them worthy mothers of a strong and noble race.

9. Health to our president, prosperity to our people, and may Congress direct its endeavors to the public good.

10.—

May Peace o ’er America spread her wing, And Commerce fill her ports with gold; May Arts and Science comfort bring, And Liberty her sons enfold.

XCIV. THE “DON’T-CARE” GIRL.

About the worst girl in all this world is the girl who doesn’t care what people think or say about her conduct; the girl who goes to every “hop,” to every party, who stays out late at night with the boys, who hangs over the gate and talks to them, and who cuts a number of foolish capers, and then when any one speaks to her, shoots her head ’way up in the air, and turns up her nose, if she can, and says boldly: “Oh, I don’t care; nobody has anything to do with me!” She is the worst girl in the world, and she will never come to any good end. Every girl who is a law unto herself in regard to all that she says or does is certain not only to bring upon herself the condemnation of those whose good opinion it is worth while to have, but she will most certainly incur the punishment of a just God. And sometimes, I am sorry to say, I think that when a girl proudly declares that she doesn’t care for the good opinion of others she does so because she knows that she has already lost all right to that good opinion.

It is wrong, boys and girls, to undertake to run roughshod over the so-called prejudices of the public. It is a foolish thing to take delight in trying to shock people by your boisterous and unladylike and unbecoming conduct. Every really wise and nice girl does care a good deal for the good opinion of others, and particularly for the good opinion of persons older than she is. She recognizes the fact that the laws of conventionality and of good society are based upon what is right and what is proper, and that no girl can with propriety set them at naught.

Some girls go so far as to say that they “don’t care” what their own fathers and mothers think. The wild girl who says this is setting at defiance not only the human parental law, but also the law of God, which plainly commands children to obey their parents.

Haven’t you ever seen a “don’t-care” girl? She is nearly always reckless in manner and speech; she is bold and defiant; she is impudent beyond mention; and she is very fond of ridiculing girls who do care a great deal what others think about them.

No matter whose children they are—no matter what schools they have attended—these “don’t care” girls are no good, and good girls ought not to associate with them. Every day such flippant girls are treading on dangerous ground, and some day, unless a merciful God prevents it, she will come to open disgrace and die and go to torment. I am hoping to see the day when all the “don’t-care” girls will have passed out of existence, and then all our girls will be of the refined and womanly kind who do care a great deal about their conduct, their manners and their morals. I don’t want my daughter to associate with any other kind.

XCV. NEGRO HEROES.

No true history of the American continent can be written without giving due credit to the part which brave negro men have played on the field of battle in the defense of liberty. At the head of the list of great negro soldiers stands unquestionably Toussaint L’Ouverture, the emancipator of Hayti, the little republic to the south of the Island of Cuba. This black hero, who never saw a soldier until he was fifty years old, crossed swords with the great Napoleon, who is said to be the greatest general the world has ever known, and he outwitted that great warrior. Wendell Phillips in a great oration places the name of Toussaint at the head of the list of all the world’s great leaders and statesmen, above the name of even our own George Washington.

Next comes Crispus Attucks, who was killed in the Boston massacre on the night of March 5, 1770. His blood was the first blood shed in the cause of American independence. John Adams and Daniel Webster both date the beginning of American independence from that terrible massacre. Later on when the Revolutionary War came the negro played a valiant part and many individuals won just fame. For instance, Peter Salem and Salem Poor both distinguished themselves at the battle of Bunker Hill, and at other points. To-day a monument stands on Boston Common erected in honor of Crispus Attucks, Peter Salem, Salem Poor, Samuel Maverick and James Caldwell.

All the boys and girls now living know about the heroism of Antonio Maceo in behalf of the freedom of Cuba, and how that brave general laid down his life for his own people shortly before the United States in 1898 took up arms in defense of Cuban liberty and drove the Spanish tyrants out. Of course there were many colored soldiers who took notable parts in the work done by our country during that short and decisive war. It is even claimed on good authority that the black soldiers saved the regiment of Rough Riders, which was commanded by the intrepid Colonel Roosevelt who afterwards became governor of New York and president of the United States.

But before the Spanish-American War the negroes had given good account of themselves on many a well-fought field—in the war of 1812 and again in the great Civil War. In the Civil War, which resulted in the restoration of the Union and the freedom of the slaves, there were 186,000 colored soldiers. To-day a monument stands on Boston Common, also, in memory of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment of United States soldiers. This was a colored regiment, which was commanded by a gallant white man named Robert Gould Shaw. He and a large proportion of his command were killed at Fort Wagner, S. C., in July, 1863.

In the Civil War we were not allowed to have our own officers, all the officers being white. In the Spanish-American War this was changed, and we had over two hundred officers, including some as high as colonels and two paymasters with the rank of majors. When another war comes we are going to have some generals as well as colonels and captains and majors. Some of the little boys who are reading these words may be called on to render this higher service for the country and the race. I hope, boys, if it should be so, that you will be prepared to give as good an account of your stewardship as those who have gone before. I hope you will learn a good deal about the lives of the great heroes above named, and about others whom I cannot stop to mention now. In this way you will gain inspiration for the future.

XCVI. FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO YOUNG PEOPLE.

Shortly before he died Frederick Douglass made a tour through the South. Among other places he visited Atlanta University. At that place he made an address to the young people. It is so full of hope and help that I wanted to place it where every ambitious black boy and girl in America can see it. It has never been published before, except in the Bulletin of Atlanta University. Mr. Douglass said:

“My young friends: I see before me an assemblage of young people, full of the blood of youth, just entering upon the voyage of life. It is an interesting spectacle to me, as to us all, to meet such an assembly as I see before me this morning in an institution of learning, of knowledge, and of ethics and of Christian graces. I experience great pleasure in what I see to-day. There is no language to describe my feelings. It was no mere image that John saw and described in the apocalypse. It was a new heaven and a new earth indeed. When I look back upon the time when I was a fugitive slave I recollect the evils and cruelty of slave-hunting. No mountain was so high, no valley was so deep, no glen so secluded, no place so sacred to liberty that I could put my foot upon it and say I was free! But now I am free! Contrasting my condition then and now the change exceeds what John saw upon the isle of Patmos. A change vast and wonderful, that came by the fulfilling of laws. We got freed by laws, marvellous in our eyes. Men, brave men, good men, who had the courage of their convictions, were arrested and subjected to persecutions, mobs, lawlessness, violence. They had the conviction of truth. Simple truth lasts forever!

“Be not discouraged. There is a future for you and a future for me. The resistance encountered now predicates hope. The negro degraded, indolent, lazy, indifferent to progress, is not objectionable to the average public mind. Only as we rise in the scale of proficiency do we encounter opposition. When we see a ship that lies rotting in the harbor, its seams yawning, its sides broken in, taking water and sinking, it meets with no opposition; but when its sails are spread to the breeze, its top-sails and its royals flying, then there is resistance. The resistance is in proportion to its speed. In Memphis three negro men were lynched, not because they were low and degraded, but because they knew their business and other men wanted their business.

“I am delighted to see you all. Don’t be despondent. Don’t measure yourselves from the white man’s standpoint; but measure yourselves by the depths from which you have come. I measure from these depths, and I see what Providence has done. Daniel Webster said in his speech at the dedication of Bunker Hill monument: ‘Bunker Hill monument is completed. There it stands, a memorial of the past, a monitor of the present, a hope of the future. It looks, speaks, acts!’ So this assembly is a monitor of the present, a memorial of the past, a hope of the future. I see boys and girls around me. Boys, you will be men some day. Girls, you will be women some day. May you become good men and women, intelligent men and women, a credit to yourselves and your country.

“I thank you for what I have experienced to-day and I leave you reluctantly, and shall always carry with me the pleasantest impressions of this occasion.”

XCVII. TOO HIGH A DAM.

Once upon a time a criminal, sentenced to a twenty-year term of punishment, declared that his ruin was due to the fact that too high a “dam” had been built around his early life.

He was a boy on a farm, the son of strict parents, who never unbent into friends and comrades, but had iron ideas of parental duty along the lines of restraints, and gave large doses of the catechism and the Ten Commandments, interspersed with much fault-finding and complaints of the waywardness of boys in general and their own boy in particular.

As a consequence the boy chafed against the “high dam,” burst its bounds early and came to the city with a zest for freedom in proportion to the restraint he had undergone and an admiration for a fast life. This was by way of reaction from his disgust for the farm and its slow ways.

“Don’t build your dams too high,” was the brief sermon preached by this condemned criminal and directed to parents—especially those who are rearing children in the country or in small towns. Human nature will continue to be human nature, and boys will continue to be boys. Youth will long, and naturally so, for variety and amusement. The house in which parents never unbend in sympathy with their children’s longing for a little brightness and jollity, where work goes on in unretrieved monotony, and home means only a place to sleep and eat in—such a home sends its boys and girls to the city before they are panoplied to meet its temptations; either this, or else it hardens and saddens them into mere machines or beasts of burden.

Books, music, flowers, games, social clubs, cheerful pictures, love and sympathy—these will bind the young heart to home and right living and will obviate the necessity of the “high dams” of restraint.

XCVIII. A GOOD FELLOW.

He was a good fellow.

He spent his money like a Prince.

There was nothing too good for him to do for those with whom he kept company.

He lived rapidly, and had no thought of to-morrow. He burned the candle of life at both ends.

To-day he is dead,—and those vampires who sucked his life’s blood and helped him to spend his money have no time to give him one thought.

Ah, how insincere and empty is the title of “good fellow” when it is applied to the man whose money is always on tap for those who are desirous of having a good time! And how corrupt and undesirable are the so-called friendships which spring from a lavish expenditure of money! Boys, the roof over your heads covers the best friends you could possibly have on earth. Those who slap you on the shoulder and say hilariously, “Good boy!” are seldom ever worth their salt. They like you for what they can get out of you—that’s all!

Real happiness in this world comes, if at all, from living right and doing right. If you are a good fellow in the sense of giving everybody a “good time” with your hard-earned means, I warn you that, when your money gives out, all your friends will desert you, and when you die they will be the last ones to come near you, and may even laugh at what a fool you made of yourself!

XCIX. THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO.

My dear boys and girls, I have written nearly one hundred stories for this book and I have not said one word about the so-called Race Problem. I have done this on purpose. I believe that the less you think about the troubles of the race and the less you talk about them and the more time you spend in hard and honest work, believing in God and trusting him for the future, the better it will be for all concerned. I know, of course, that the sufferings which are inflicted upon the colored people in this country are many and grievous. I know that we are discriminated against in many ways—on common carriers, in public resorts and even in private life. The right to vote is being taken away from us in nearly all the Southern states. Lynchings are on the increase. Not only our men but our women also are being burned at the stake. What shall we do? There are those who say that we must strike back—use fire and torch and sword and shotgun ourselves. But I tell you plainly that we cannot afford to do that. The white people have all the courts, all the railroads, all the newspapers, all the telegraph wires, all the arms and ammunition and double the men that we have. In every race riot the negro would get the worst of it finally. But there is a higher reason than that. We cannot afford to do wrong. We cannot afford to lose our decency, our self-respect, our character. No man will ever be the superior of the man he robs; no man will ever be the superior of the man he steals from. I would rather be a victim than a victimizer. I would rather be wronged than to do wrong. And no race is superior to the race it tramples upon, robs, maltreats and murders. In spite of prejudice; in spite of proscription; in spite of nameless insults and injuries, we cannot as a race, afford to do wrong. But we can afford to be patient. God is not dead. His chariots are not unwheeled. It is ordained of God that races, as well as individuals, shall rise through tribulations. And during this period of stress and strain through which we are passing in this country I believe that there are unseen forces marshalled in the defense of our long-suffering and much-oppressed people. “They that be with us are more than they that be with them.” What should we care, then, though all the lowlands be filled with threats, if the mountains of our hope and courage and patience are filled with horses and chariots of Divine rescue?

C THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN.

My last words shall be to parents. Many parents neglect the training of their children until the boys and girls have grown to be almost men and women, and then they expect all at once to develop them into well-rounded characters, as if by magic. Others fix upon a definite time in life—say, ten or twelve years old—before which time they say it is unnecessary to seek to make lasting impressions upon the minds of children, all unconscious of the fact that the character may have been long before that period biased for good or evil.

I say it deliberately—it is a deep and abiding conviction with me, that the time to begin to shape the character of children is as soon as they begin to know their own mothers from other mothers, or as soon as they become awake to the events which are taking place around them. The farmer who has the notion that his child can wait, does not dare to let his corn and cotton wait. He has observed that there are noxious weeds which spring up side by side with the seed he has planted, and, marvelous to say, the weeds outgrow the plants. They must, therefore, be cut down and kept down, or else they will ruin the crop.